December, 2022 archive
Twits Own Twitter, Ad Hack Dept. 0
To borrow a term from Bob Cesca, more muskery. From Techdirt, via Above the Law:
It appears that Musk’s solution to this is to force people to cough up their private info.
Momento Mori 0
For some fool reason (as my mother used to say), I find myself these past few weeks missing my old internet friend Shaun Mullen, maybe because it was three years ago this month that he passed.
We emailed regularly, but we met only once, a meeting I will always remember, dining together in Newark, Delaware, as I was on my way to visit one of my kids in Philadelphia and he happened to be in Newark for some reason of his own.
I am a better person for having known him.
Unwelcome Home 0
Mike DiMauro is taken aback by the outpouring of racism, bigotry, and hatred (in some quarters) in response to the release of Britney Griner. An excerpt from his column:
Seriously. Reading the abject hatred tethered to Griner’s rescue — the saving of a human life — made me think of Sen. Howard Baker’s classic question to bagman Tony Ulasewicz during Watergate: “Who thought you up?”
Who thought these people up? Where do they come from? Have they always been here? All I know is they’re helping us lose our humanity one keystroke at a time.
Afterthought:
I quibble with his use of the term, “amusing irony.” Frightening, appalling, disgusting, maybe, but not amusing.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society,” Reprise 0
writing in The Seattle Times, Steve Valandra, an American who has a residence in Portugal, looks at American gunnuttery from afar. An excerpt:
Inexhaustible (But Exhausting Nonetheless) 0
Aside:
Bottomless is right.
Each is trying to reach for the bottom and neither has reached it yet.
Image via Juanita Jean.
Twits Own Twitter 0
Badtux reports that Twitter has plucked his last nerve.
QOTD 0
Edmund Crispin:
Human beings who propose doing something idiotic generally manage to persuade themselves that the laws of nature are going to be suspended for their benefit . . . .
Crispin, Edmund (Robert Bruce Montgomery), The Long Divorce (Ipso Books, 2017), p. 67.
(I was unable to find any information about Ipso books, there is no physical address in the
volume, and the website, www.ipsobooks.com, listed on the book appears to be defunct.
But the book is real and readily available from other sources.)
Psychic Psycho
0
You can’t make this stuff up, at least, not if you are a sane person with some concept of social responsibility and the public good.
One more time, “social” media isn’t.
The Appeal 0
Afterthought:
In thes new Gilded age, might it be possible that some persons have been allow to accumulate more wealth than is good for them, or for everybody else?
Pumped and Dumped 0
That someone has somehow become a “social media influencer” is no guarantee of credibility. Or integrity.
(Perhaps especially integrity.)
One more time, “social” media isn’t.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Here in the NRA’s Garden of Bleedin’, politeness is a family value. From the New York Times; follow the link for the numbers.
Gun violence recently surpassed car accidents as the leading cause of death for American children.
A society that values portable phalluses over progeny is a ipso facto a failed society.
The Boy in the Bubble 0
After discussing the theory that we are living in some sort of simulation, Jonathan Wolf concedes that most of us are not, but some of us, most notably Elon Musk. Here’s big of his article:
Extremely rich people are often susceptible to the same affliction. We do not live in a pure meritocracy. Some unmeritorious people still get lucky, some very meritorious people get unlucky, and almost everyone is very, very good at certain things while simultaneously being terrible at others. For the extremely wealthy, though, it’s easy to build walls around themselves inside of which they know more about everything than everyone else.
In related news, Chris Williams takes a slightly less charitable view:
This man goes out of the way daily to prove that meritocracy is bunk.
Follow the links to see each writer’s reasoning.
